I envision a future where people live in self sufficient arcologies or homes, where wind and solar with compressed air backup systems power electrical devices. Where home or city hydroponics feed entire populaces. Its would be a world in which airships carried cargo instead of jets and there is a golden neo-age of sail as composite frieghters with rigid sails ply the oceans. I see maglev trains zipping across the continent run on solar electricity and or rigid sails that actually also produce hydrogen for our ocean going vessels to run on, and industry to burn for smelting. Where cars run on electricity stored in flywheels or ultracapacitors or are even power by wind or compressed air, instaed of using long fuel supply lines and exploited labor. Where sewage is used to create natural gas for heating and cooking I see the possibilities of a world where fossil fuels and nuclear energy and weapons are a thing of our ignorant past. I see the need for slaughterhouses replaced by cloned meat grown in vats to specifics flavors, textures, and without fear of of contaminents like rogue proteins. And fresh safe drinking water is recycled in house.

There are numerous technological hurdles in the way of such a tomorrow it is true. I hope this thread can be used for open discussion of what I outlined as well as other technologies or possibilities that can benefit all Earthling kind.

These are some of the comments and links from the previous thread Alternative Energies Alternative Futures which discussed these topics which I felt were important enough to save. Note Yahoo news links often dissappear and are generally temporary some other links may be dead as well.

"[Part of the reasons of why windpower makes sense. Note that windturbines especial Horizontal ones have turbulence can affect local weather, the solution is to use better low turbulence rotors. Other than that minmal spacing of 1000 feet to 1/2 mile is good to keep them from making downwind turbines ineffecient.]
Cost of a 1600MW nuke plant=$6 000 000 000 http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jun ... ews002.asp

As for costs

The Cost of 1600MW of Wind turbines at $1700 per kW
2 720 000 000 or assuming we'd build the old non-Maglev style (those that need 8mph winds instead of 2mph winds) we can assume they operate 1/3 of the time so the cost is x 3 for triple the turbines=$8 160 000 000. Still no centralization, no nuclear waste, and harder target is very appealing even at the slightly higher price. http://www.jcmiras.net/surge/p83.htm

will citizens put up with for a nuclear future and uranium mining sites ( http://www.txpeer.org/toxictour/uri.html )"- Aquatank Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 4:04 am
"A small bit on why nuclear power should be avoided.

The cost of a nuclear reactyor is up from $2-$4 Billion 2 years ago to $7 billion

The price of Uranium has gone up from $10 per pound to $60 per pound and easy to get supplies of it are becoming rarer hence the Sharbot Lake, Haudenosaunee & Algonquin vs. Canada standoff. ( http://www.mohawknationnews.com/news/si ... /news4.php )

The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility is 19 years behind schedule and $38 billion over original cost estimates. leaving 121 temporary sites in 39 states with inadequete security.

Quote:
"There is a growing risk of radioactive material getting into the wrong hands," Brown said. He said there were 250 incidents last year of nuclear material being lost or stolen, and a lot was never recovered. "

Reactors only last about 40 years, and decomissioning costs $250-$500 each. Over 100 reactors have closed but not all have been fully decommisioned since 1954.

Quote:
Comparing nuclear power with wind, Brown pointed out that nuclear power already costs twice as much as electricity produced from the wind, not including the additional costs he cited.

"If we look at the economics comparing nuclear with wind, a dollar invested in wind produces more energy, leads to a greater reduction in carbon emissions, and creates more jobs than one invested in nuclear power," said Brown.

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/09/11/san ... om-sewage/
"A note about the sewage power. The above mentioned an American fraction of power assuming 1 person 1 house at full American annual load. A 3 person European home uses 4238kwh per year http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_ ... fo/hec.htm
So if American cut down their usage to European loads at three persons a house San Antonio would need 442994.67 x 4238 KWH per year the toatal annual load would be 1877411411.46 kwh (not counting factories & stores etc.) with an annual output of sewage electricity of 96277765.5 KWH thats 1/19.6 th of the power needed for residences. Think about how much more we'd save by going to LED bulbs"-Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 11:29 pm
. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090322/sc ... 0322232903

Energy Recovery Efficiencies:
Flywheel 90%
Electrochemical 70%
Hydrogen 42% (projected estimate)
Gasoline 18% http://www.llnl.gov/str/Hybrid.html
Where to get the money for an Alternative Energy Infrastructure
"Newest offensive give away, $63 billion in military aid Israel and some of teh Arab States, ( http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug20 ... -a01.shtml ) in addition to the $80 billion a year being put into rebuilding Iraq. Imagine what they could do if they spent that kind of money on an alternative energy system and new infrastructure to support it in the USA, not to mention universal health care and social security."-Aquatank Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:57 pm
"A crack down on tax evaders with offshore accounts. Apparently $100 billion dollars a year in taxes is evaded this way. Senators are already asking for a crackdown, so what I'm suggesting is getting the money into the national alternative energy infrastructure project and onec thats stabilized any extra funds into social security (and perhaps a government pays for health care plan if there enough to do both) instead of buying more military equipment and waging war with it. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/ameri ... 68487.html"-Aquatank Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:51 pm
"If, for argument's sake, you were to put a five-year levy in OECD countries of $5 a barrel, you would generate $100 billion per annum. It translates into roughly 0.3 cent per liter," he said" In reference to a $750 Billion global green program cost. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=shi ... er-economy "-Aquatank Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:13 am

April 10, 20093:46 am

Aquatank

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The arcology or self sufficiency technology hurdle is a bit of enginnering puzzle for me.
basically we are looking at 1.2 acres of food per person grown in soil by American dietary standards. (http://www.justfarmequipment.com/state_ ... 009&ID=238 ) meaning a family of 4 requires 5.6 acres dedicated to growing food. Using Hydroponics can vastly reduce the needed yields depending on crop ( http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/Arti ... paper.html ) for generalizations I'm using a 1/4 reduction. Thusly a family of 4 would require a hydroponics set of 1.2 acres (52272 square feet/4856.22 meters) thats the area of 228.63ft x 228.63ft (69.69m x 9.69m) square. Sunlight is better for such a future than growlights because grow lights require 2000 lumens per square foot ( http://www.hydroponics-at-home.com/hydr ... hting.html ) and thusly are an energy hog. The solution is partly in going in a tirered/terraced verticle direction facing Sol's path across the latitudal directions, unfortunately this still creates houses bigger than what we have today generally for a four person family.

My current idea is the solution might be individual self sufficient A-frame houses on a lattitudal highway (like Route 6) The side facing the south in this case would house the hydroponics while the road facing side could contain the homes built above or beside family owned and operated small business.

April 10, 200911:10 am

Lashmar

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Where did you find you’re first post from again?

Read between the lies

April 10, 20093:07 pm

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Lashmar
Sorry, I didn't "find" it, I had it. When I collected the links from the older board I saved them on my hardrive, and just reused them. Which should help Rath because buried in them somewhere are articles on the inkjet printed solar cells, I'm pretty sure because they came out a while back in the news.

April 11, 20093:00 pm

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These articles are on the subject of lab or industrial grown meat (I call it "hydroponic meat")

Now also back in the late 1980s or early 1990s I also heard (TV science news show) of a Canadian (?) group that was trying to produce an artificial l milk in a three vat system simulating cow stomachs using a cow stomach's enzymes, water and ground up hay. At the time the experiment was working but I haven't heard or read anything about it since and I don't know if it could mass produced or not but it would have produced contaminent free milk.

__________________________________________________
Lashmar I've been waiting for the scientist to use therapeutic cloning techniques and electrical stimulation to make hydroponic meat for ages now. I never liked going to slaughterhouses and getting away from killing even animals for food in this manner shows a bit of respect for the other creatures on our planet.
_____________________________________________________
I mentioned above the problem with electricity needed to light 1.2 acres of hydroponics and why its important to find a building design to use natural light. from what I was able to figure out: Internally with no sunlight the plants would require 104544000 lumens. Using T-5 flourescent 54 watt bulbs with 5000 lumens that would require 20909 flourecsent bulbs and use 1,129,075.2 Watt hours not counting household use. (I was thinking of 12 stories of hydroponics and 1 floor of living space each about 66ft x 66ft)

April 12, 200912:23 pm

Lashmar

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I never liked going to slaughterhouses and getting away from killing even animals for food in this manner shows a bit of respect for the other creatures on our planet.

No, no, no, no, no and no again. 😡

The way the American shit (I’m not going to call it meat, it has to many growth hormones to be counted as meat 😉 🙂 ), is produced I’m not surprised you want to get away from it.

It’s not meat and it’s not treated like meat.

Respect the animals by giving it a good life and then by killing it in a nice respectful way and then use all of it. 😀

There’s no point in making false meat.

Read between the lies

April 12, 20092:23 pm

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There are very good reasons for making hydroponic meat the chief one being that we waste too much good farm land on cattle, by specifically grwoing what is needed and not the other biological needs of cattle we reduce the amount of area wasted on cattle as well as fuel costs extra maintaining the cattle. The second reason is until we start using kangaroo gut bacteria in them, they are a major source of methane pollution.

April 12, 20092:44 pm

Lashmar

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NO.

Fuel cost can be solved very easily. Bio-fuel.

As for the fart gas( ). That would matter if they use bio-fuel because it would be off-set.

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